Everything Old is New Again.

The timeless choccie crackle! They were the hit of any party when I was a girl. All that sugary chocolate yumminess and even though some loons have tried to fiddle with the recipe, a good crackle remains the same.

4cups of Rice Bubbles
250gm of melted Copha
1 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of coconut
5 big spoons full of cocoa powder

Mix it all up and scoop it into paper patty cups and chuck into the fridge. And then exercise some restraint as they set hard.

Some recipes call for hundreds and thousands, but that has always been for fairy bread, and some call for nuts, but in today's Epi-pen society, even if I thought it a good addition, which I don't, who would dare add it?

Zig, never one to toe the line, asked for a glossy cherry to be popped on top and that I was happy to do.

Bell and I delivered the goodies to school today and met Zig's class and his teacher. They all sang 'Happy Birthday' and then gobbled up their treats. It was a fun few minutes and definitely worth the time to make 'em and the 2 hours driving there and back to deliver 'em. I love watching him be the King of the Castle.

The whole ceremony is the same as it ever was, except that I had to announce that there was coconut in 'em and then the teacher announced it again, but as they are in yr5, she figured they were old enough to know if they were OK to eat 'em. As she didn't immediately go into Health and Safety Police mode, I liked her even more.

Zig was happy to get a cuddle and a kiss from Ma and was still Ok with, 'My Darling Boy' even though Bell had warned me that it might not be good, cos she is now living with an ever growing list of what she is not allowed to say.

We are set for tomorrow with more traditional fare, even though the party is an escape from history.
We are hoping that the kids who are jumping about tomorrow, don't throw up, or at least if they do, they do it at the centre, not in the backs of our cars....oooh YUK.

We are presuming that they can all swim, otherwise Southbank Beach might prove a nuisance, cos at the moment we plan to sit like ladies on a rug and chat the afternoon away. I guess we will see.

Kids have changed very little, neither have birthdays or food or the dive for all things sweet.

Ah predictability.

10 - it's a mile stone!

I wonder how old the little fella is gonna be when he tells me that I just can't call him 'My Darling Boy' anymore. I do not look forward to hearing that, but I expect that it will be all apart of us growing up. Bugger!

I have had a sore neck for sometime which is completely irrelevant to this post, except that the woman I saw for a remedial massage and more than a little acupuncture - ouchie menouchie! was waxing lyrical about her new grandie who lives in Townsville, so visits are few and a bit too far in between. She was using some sort of hocus pockus subliminal way of getting the baby to remember her, by wearing the same perfume all the time and calling him 'gorgeous' or something. Anyway as I lay there with all the needles 'doing their thing' I hoped that the kid liked the perfume or else she was in trouble from the get go, and I was aware that I have called Zig My Darling Boy for almost 10 years, so I reckon he must be well and truly used to it by now.

It's quite the big deal turning 10. There is no logical rational reason for this being a BIG one but it certainly seems so to me.

For his whole life Zig has been waiting to be 10 so that he is allowed to have a fizzy drink. Yeh his father has allowed all manner of shit since forever, but Mum's rule has been you've got to be 10 to have a fizz, and as that's Mum's rule, it's been the rule here too. Not that we always agree on the rules. There is far more sugar here at the Big House than is ever allowed at home, but I still reckon that's just me doing my job as Ma and besides I don't hold with the evils of sugar hoo har.

Steve wondered about the arbitrary nature of the 10 / fizz rule. And I guess that's fair enough. It doesn't make any sense. It's probably a number Bell pulled out of her bum when Zig was little and driving her nuts for a lemonade. 'Not until your 10!' and that's how the rule was born.

It's the same as parents' rules about dating or staying up late, or watching M rated movies. Once an age has been set down then that becomes the RULE. Kids never forget the age that was part of the edict, even if they push the boundaries years ahead of time.

I am glad that parents have rules. Kids are too I reckon.

So no party in the park for the BIG 10. We are off to SkyZone for some bouncing madness and then to Southbank for a picnic and a swim. Just 6 kids so not the usual mayhem of 30 dubious souls running amuck, but driving and timetabling instead to make sure there is still enough stress to go around.

Yippee to number 10.

Car servicing - finally we agree

I hate taking my car in for a service. It seems like mechanical blackmail to me. 'If tho donst gettith thy car serviced asif we declarith, thenith your warranty is voidith.'

My Mazda 2 is a clever little thing, it can carry all manner of stuff, tardis like, constantly surprising Steve and I enjoy driving her around. She is nifty and economical, the air con really blasts out the chill on hot days and the radio / CD player is loud enough to make me look like some head banging grannie. She is the second one I've had since new, the first now lives at Bell's. So for 7 years I have phaffed around and smiled a lot, until it comes time for the compulsory service days.

I have argued that the degree of over servicing was just money raking and as the warranty was  contingent on following these ridiculous rules, really it was just extortion.

So when I needed to book the old girl in for a service which was overdue by a month and a half, even though I had only driven 13000 km ( not quite 4000 km since the last time I threw money at 'em ) instead of 20000 km, which was the name of this service, which made it a major one! I was not best pleased.

I hate going there and I hate the fact that you play degrees of separation from mechanic, spear headed by the front of house staff who as mechanics would make rather adequate up-sellers at a call centre.

So with migraine head and a belly full of bile I arrived today. I whinged about the unnecessary cost and effort and then it dawned on the girlie, that in deed it was NOW deemed unnecessary.

For all this time I have fronted as demanded, every 6 months or 10000 km, which ever came first. But finally Mazda has decided that that really is just taking the piss, so she told me to come back in June,- 300 bucks saved. Yippee! I can only imagine that at some meeting somewhere important a bunch of folk sat around laughing and agreeing that they had taken the piss for quite long enough and that they would now arbitrarily choose a one year timetable to replace the six months, unless of course the car is driven for lots and lots of miles. Yippee again!

Except that then I remember that I have paid and paid for this girlie ride, and the last one. It seems remarkable to me that no-one is wanting to chat about refunding some of the extorted cash. But as that is never gonna happen and if I chased it, it would be a hiding to nothing, I am perhaps uncharacteristically gonna let it go. Yeh, I am just gonna be pleased that I only need to go in once a year. YippeeKaiYai! 

EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs - YIPPEE!

 

 

There is just nothing at all that I find entertaining or simulating or satisfying about it - no I am not talking about that colourful semi soft porn pic doing the rounds, I am talking about anything at all to do with 'keeping house' It all just gives me the shits and if I had a proper job, the first thing I would do is employ someone to do all the shit I hate, but as my job is housekeeper to the Steve, I would be out of work if I paid someone to do, what I do, so I do it, not always with a smile, well truthfully rarely with a smile, but  do it I do.

 

Except for one thing. I don't do OVENS. Every Sunday for more than a decade Steve has thrown a lump of well butchered meat into the oven. The type of meat makes little difference, except that I believe that pork might really spew the fat more so than lamb or beef. Anyway, he does this because I just wont. I reckon Sunday nights are for cheesey toast but as his Pommie tradition insists it's a roast for him, he has to cook it himself. Yeh I do help him eat it.

 

So 2 hours of fat splatter every weekend makes for a particularly filthy oven. It gets very quickly to the point where making a Pav or even some biscuits is not possible unless of course you fancy them being meat flavoured, which oddly enough, I do not.

 

 

 

I rang the lovely Janelle, at EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs and booked Giles in. It's their own business and they work like stink at it and the results are truly amazing. My oven looks like a new one and this happens every time that Giles come on in with his heavy duty water stuff and a mountain of elbow grease. He is not happy if the oven does not look new.

 

 

 

I wasn't going to mention it but the oven was in such dire need of a good seeing to, that it burst into flames while I was trying to cook some Veal parmies on Saturday. The cheese was melted but not as bubbly as we like it when all of a sudden the layers of grease on the element had had enough. I quickly pulled out the parmies and closed the oven door and hoped for the best.

 

I was pleased that I had made arrangements prior to the fire THIS time. Giles believed me, I think, but I rather imagine he uses our oven as the barometer of filth. I suppose it's good to be noted for something huh? 

 

If you are on the Goldie and your oven or BBQ is a fright, and you just bloody hate scrubbing the shit out of 'em then why not give EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs a call. 1300788685.

 

No discounts / money or offers of cheap work in the future have been made. Just a happy happy girl with a spanking - there's that movie again....clean oven. 

 



Cyclone Marcia vs Media Hype

I am pleased to say that friends who were chased down by bloody Marcia have come out the other side relatively unscathed. Yes there has been significant damage and I very much doubt that there is any insurance payout for hours and hours of hard yakka in the garden or the years of silent growing, but the folk I know are physically unharmed even if it might take some time to get over the nightmare of it all.

Social Media and mobile phones mean that updates were easy and I hope that all involved felt the love of being instantly connected even in the middle of a disaster.

What gave me the shits was that because there was so much warning, the tellie stations had time to send up 'reporters' and film crews and then schedule rolling coverage for hour after hour.

Coverage was designed to frighten and warn and make people do as they were told. Every time the Queensland Premier spoke she whipped up a bit more hysteria and only just pulled up short of telling people to do as they are told when they are told. It seemed to me as I watched that I could have been vaporised into a parallel universe where democracy was a myth. There was so much hyperbole and inflammatory language, and misinformation that even here, hundreds of kilometres out of harm's way, people were going into panic.

We went about our normal day and sadly that included doing the groceries and that's when some do gooder who had clearly watched more tellie than me - I didn't think that was possible, asked us if we were stocking up. Yeh if I was gonna be cut off from everything civilised my most important purchase would be loo cleaner and facial wipes, and the double length paper towels I am sure would have been extremely useful in mopping up a flooded house. Ha!

The Mayor down here continued the panic, such that the Arts Centre sent out a message on Facebook telling punters that if they didn't fancy fighting the floods they'd be able to get refunds for theatre tickets. This is pretty unheard of.

It was bad! The cyclone did very real damage and rightfully frightened people in its wake, but the media and politicians had other motives in flying into the affected areas. It wasn't about safety, or boosting local morale or getting on the useful end of a real shovel, it was so obviously self serving, all about ratings and votes. So inflammatory language and an authoritative tones and seconds of video on hour long loops were employed to get everyone worried and frantic and hopefully running around in a bit of blind panic, and certainly making sure that if they had any power, they'd have the tellie on all day boosting ratings and favour.

The old tale, 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' aught to be a warning to these media hounds. If you send people into a panic and nothing happens, they don't sit around thanking god for the warning. They get pissed off for moving shit inside and consequently having to mop the floor when they move it back. They wonder what the fuck they are gonna do with a dozen cans of spaghettios and all that long life milk. And after 2 or 3 scares in a season they stop listening. And that'll be a problem if there is ever a big problem.

Follow the Yellow Grass Road.

A part of living in the snow it is that you have a responsibility to clear your front path and the footpath outside, and if you are negligent in your duty and someone takes a dive and breaks a hip outside your place, then you can be sued. People are pretty careful to do the right thing, and the Councils seem to happily spread salt or whatever to keep the streets passable. How very civic minded !

The park next door how ever has fallen into disrepair. It used to be that the mower blokes / people would be around ALL the time, usually pissing me off at 6.30am playing boy racers with their tractors and whipper snippers. The grass was kept under control and the picnic tables and seats were kept clean and in good repair.

But that is no longer. I am not sure who is not responsible for the park. Maybe it's the Council, maybe they have contracted it out, but whoever it is they all seem to think it's someone else's job. The grass grows LONG LONG LONG until I reach tipping point and call 'em up. In typical bureaucratic fashion, it is necessary to ring at least twice before there is any action. Last time it was nearly a month between mows and that meant grass more than 2 foot tall.

This time it's been only 3 weeks, but as I have rung only once and it is expected to rain for the next few days, by the time it's done it'll be the mandatory month. During that time I will have mowed my grass 4 or 5 times.

Anyway today the allergic reaction up my legs hit the pits, and it's all because of the shitting long grass that has gone to seed in the park. Balls have gone missing along with a number of small dogs and I believe one Dad had to get out his machete to find his toddler and was lucky to not be arrested for being armed.

The scratching abated long enough for me to get out the mower and mow myself a walkway, much like people are doing with shovels all across the snowy northern hemisphere. It certainly looks a little odd but I am happy to think that when I pop over to the shops for some veg later on, I will not have to take an antihistamine when I get back to ward off the grass seed itchies.

I am only sorry that I didn't think about it before.

Sand Safari - Surfers Paradise

 

 

For just about 2 weeks there are these wonderful lumps of whimsy along the beach at Surfers Paradise. They are bloody marvellous even if they just set your brains to working out how the sand stays together - I think it has to do with the special sand they use, as unlikely as it sounds the grains are square so wedge together for better stickability. I could have made that up..

 

They are all Artists' takes on Disney films and some you will know and some you  might wonder about unless you have had the joy of taking littlies to the pictures recently. They were all beautifully created.

 

The first one and the last one here from 'Aladdin' looks to me, so much like a melancholy Robin Williams who did the voice work for the Genie, that it reminded me he is gone and that he is missed.   

 

 

 

 

 

Shit shop shopping.

It's no secret that I do love a bargain. 30% off the RRP of something lovely is good for a look - see and an excellent excuse to trawl around some pretty shops in the air-con. It is mostly not too crowded and there is plenty of room for me to walk around with taking out the eye of a small child or knocking the walking stick from an oldie as I swing my shopping basket with gay abandon.

But Shit Shop shopping ain't like that.

For starters, today I went to Aldi. And almost immediately I was corralled by some crazy old woman with 'just fucked me' hair and some other store's trolley which was struggling to fit in in the aisles of a new environment. I was looking at clothes airers - don't ask me why - I have no explanation apart from an admission of a loco moment. I could not escape the trolley or the woman or the airers. She actually ran me over with the shitting thing and as she finally shovelled her way passed, I said, 'Excuse me, I'm sorry, thank you so much.' My sarcasm was lost on her but that might have been because her ears were wedged with frizzed up green hair.

Now Aldi is the sort of place that if you have really lost the will to live and you fancied going there every week, you can get some really good bargains. But I don't go every week so I need to stand there looking like my own bit of crazy, wearing my dark glasses so I can read the signs. ( Blind without 'em ho hum) Today I got detergent and a soaker hose and a spatula and some on sale cotton buds. I didn't buy a bag cos they all fitted into my basket. It was pretty heavy so instead of carrying it around I popped it into a trolley at Target for my next bit of shit shopping.

It could have been because they are having a stock take, or it could have been because it was Monday or it could have been because aliens were due at any moment, but there was staff EVERYWHERE, definitely not a good day to try to nick any stuff. And even though there were plenty of people in uniform about, there was very little help on offer. Socks and jocks were on sale, but only if you bought 40 bucks worth. I found Steve's preferred socks, but hey only had 'em in Yeti size, so I asked for some in regular human size and the girlie went away and came back and said that she could not have taken any from out the back cos that would have upset the counting. I didn't counter with an argument that a few packages fewer would have been less to count, and instead just buggered off.

I had a look at the bed linen cos I have some vague memory that Target used to sell 100% cotton stuff, but that seemed to have gone by the board along with regular socks and cushions that don't require a second mortgage. The sweeties were well received when I got home though.

I had the Target trolley as I ventured into the truly shittiest of shit shops, The Reject Shop. ( How would that name have come about in the marketing meeting?) There is just nowhere to hide in this place. There are half emptied boxes everywhere and shit overflowing the shelves. There are nutsos and wankers and people singing and staff whinging. I pushed on with my trolley which was not designed for this shop and developed more tolerance for the cow in Aldi.

The pet and gardening sections are at the back so push on I did and Dog was very happy that I bothered. A few other bits and pieces and I was outta there. Yippee.

So now I have my basket filled with Aldi shit and bags from Target and The Shittiest Shit shop so of course it was then that I remembered that I needed to get a tub of Tzatziki and some Turkish bread from Woolies. That Target trolley was really doing the rounds today.

Shit shopping finished and out to the car and a lovely woman with 'normal' hair asked if  I wanted her to take my trolley back along with hers. What a woman! 'Yes Please,' I smiled but bugger me, the bloody thing wouldn't fit into hers and hers wouldn't fit into mine so I was shit out of luck., but not out of shit, cos that was already sitting in the back of my car.

Change - climate and otherwise.

My lovely Dad was a great gambler. Well that is to say he gambled A LOT, on just about anything and sometimes he won and I suppose sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, he lost. But we only heard about the wins. I remember him coming home, not quite pissed as a maggot, but weaving his way into the house and one night he held 2 big fistfuls of large denomination bills and threw it all up in the air. It was like something out of a movie. The old woman went spastic and not in a good way and ranted and raved and grabbed as much as she could and started ripping it up into little bits. Clearly this was back in the day on One and Two Dollar bills and they were all paper. She was not amused. Perhaps he had lost the week before and had promised never to go to the track again. I don't know, but if that was the case that would have been the only QUIET argument they ever had, except for the year that they didn't say a word to each other and Dad took me to his Ladies' Night at his flash club and everyone thought I was a hooker, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, there she was the next morning sitting at the dining table in her nightie sticky-taping it all back together like a giant expensive jigsaw.

And they used that cash to buy a little apartment at Broadbeach. Today people would call it Surfers Paradise, and that is not the only change in the last 40 years.

I spent married time there and single mother hols there, well not in the little flat but in that area. I have driven the old road between Brisvegas and the Spit just for an hour of smelling the surf, more times than I can count. It has provided solace and joy and an excellent place to right the wrongs of the world, at least in my brain.

So 10 years ago I was a fully abled, youngish, gainfully employed, woman and I still loved the beach. I will always be a Goldie Girl, perhaps because of that little flat or more likely because that's where we always went for hols. I have walked the beach between Surfers and very much further south for what seems my whole life.   

Today, because I am older and unemployed and I am finally able to test out 2 good knees, I spent a couple of hours walking the old trail, and bloody beautiful it was, well mostly it was, except that there were some changes some good, some quite shitful. I took some pics as I walked. These are the things that even in an old age fog, I noticed were different. 

Boardwalk Benches with anti skater bits

Dunnies

Outside the dunnies

Electricity Boxes?

Parking Metres

 

Blueys bloody everywhere.

Jelly Fish absolutely every bloody where

Tidy bags of dog shit.

More fucking Jellies

Seagulls

Flags a plenty

Lighter rubbish - I used to use matches.

Surfers Skyline

Construction site where the old flat used to be.

It's been the battle point for years.

And Finally all the properties have been bought up and the development is HUGE

 

Pink Poodle Neon sign Heritage listed, but moved off the highway and hidden around the corner. 

Stainless steel and granite showers.

New Loos aplenty

Free BBQs



 

 

So I will leave it up to you what is good and what it evil, I bet politics play a part in those decisions, but the one thing I reckon we will all agree on is the arrival of the Jellies and the Blueys. This is definitely shitful.

I am off to do some research about why there are so many of the blighters, cos doing the chicken high step over 'em is sure as shit not a childhood memory. I have more than a sneaking suspicion that it ahs to do with a change in water temp, but I am keeping an open mind.

I used to think I was smart.

Do you ever feel like you are sliding uncontrollably into the mire? And it doesn't matter what you try, you just can't stop it? And all your knowledge about gradients and soil types and friction and stuff are fucking useless cos what you really need to know is how to play a video game and what tools you should have collected along the way, yeh that's right when you were given the option of grabbing that shovel you should have taken it, but you thought it was too cumbersome and couldn't imagine how you might kill the baddie with it so you left it behind. Does that sound like I belong in this century? Well if I have fooled you it is only cos I have listened to a 9 year old and absorbed some of the banal chatter.

I want to have my own proper website. Now don't think for a minute that I actually know what that is. But I want people to be easily able to leave comments and I want to put all these posts into some sort of order - some categories You know so when I am banging on about Zig's birthday, John Howard can skip over that to my opinion on the never ending vote counting for the Queensland election - don't go looking for that, I haven't bothered. And I would like it to look better, like it was put together by someone who has a brain and a sense of the aesthetic.

Anyway I started looking about for some help.

I quickly discovered that the going rate for building a website is between 4 and 5 THOUSAND dollars.  Well that's a fair chunk of wonga and when I don't quite know what I want, it'd be like walking into Tiffany's and trying to buy a chicken and wanting to pay for it in passionfruit. Before you spend the money it'd be good to know what you want.

Then today a friend sent me some webinar links. Yeh I know it sounds like I am speaking MOD MOD. (Seminars on line for those of you older than me.) Anyway I had a look and there are all sorts of cheaper possibilities where you build your own website, but it seems still to be rather formulaic, and then there's the problem of an ongoing weekly charge for using the format. Steve is not keen on renting that bit of cyber ether and I am not sure that it would ever be possible to shift my stuff outta there, so I am not sure who would own it.

So I am stuck where I started which is slipping down that slope into oblivion cos I just do not know enough, and if I am honest, I am not sure how keen I am about going back to school to learn something. If the teacher assumed I know the jargon I would very quickly get to be silly naughty, much like a slow year 9 boy, probably carving my name into the desk and eating bits of the computer, and if the teacher went too slowly I might have to throw stuff at them like a snarky year 9 girl. I was never the easiest of students. I only got by because mostly I knew the answers or could make a good argument and in this instance I would be good for neither.

Any advice about how to get what I don't know I want, would be cool.

Simple Sundays

Sundays are all to often just a slide closer to dead, but today has been lovely.

Well if you don't count the ridiculous rising at 4 am . Insomnia really is a bitch!

Up and out to the Local Markets for a ginormous 4 shot coffee which would get even the most sluggish of hearts started, and a bacon and egg burger thing which was ok. The push and shove of people and their lack of spatial awareness was comment worthy but not swear making irritating and the ripe fragrant strawberries will bring smiles all week as I add them to the frozen smoothies for breakfast.

Then off to the Spit for a dog morning. It was simply spectacular today. The surf was rough and the water as clear as I have ever seen it. The panorama was filled with exactly the colours I love to paint.
Dog played chase the sand and I ventured into the surf to test out my new knee. It worked fine. In the end though because I am a bit of a coward and Dog is surprisingly not all that keen on being in the surf when she can't touch the sand, I took to sitting close to the waters edge and just enjoyed getting bashed around by the baby waves and playing with Dog. Yes this meant a sand mine in my knicky-noos but I just didn't give a damn. Certainly not at the time, however I willingly admit that sand up the wazoo driving home was less than comfortable.

Into the pool and I dropped the sand, thinking that the vacuum thing would do it's job and that would be better than trying to sweep all the sand down the drain hole in the shower, but as Steve pointed out, no one knows where it goes to once the pool thing eats it up. That it one of life's little mysteries.

Dog is broken and asleep and I very much doubt we will see her til dinner time. She just has no 'off' switch. Me on the other hand, well I am ready for a nanny nap and another swim.

'The Theory of Everything'

This is a very 'nominated' movie and I can easily see why.

I knew that it was based on Hawking's life and that's about it. It became clear early on that whilst it was about the Professor, it was definitely from the Mrs' ie Jane's perspective. And NO this does not mean that it is a girlie pic, or a chick flick.

There was stuff about Motor Neuron disease that I rather doubt is common knowledge but again that is not the main thrust of the movie.

Mostly it deals with struggle and success and determination in a rather understated way. There are hints of an argument about God and the Bang theory, but it didn't bang on about either.

The Professor's physics theories were skimmed through in such a way as even this Arty - Farty sort of understood and as the movie was loosely based on Jane Hawking's memoirs and she too was an Arty - Farty so I supposed the portrayal should come as no surprise.

I liked it!

As an aside though, a debate started this week, from the disabled camp about why an able bodied actor was chosen to play the lead. I wanted to humph and punch the table. Have we gone this far down the track of political correctness that an able actor should have be given the shove in lieu of a disabled actor who would no doubt have been unable to carry the scenes of Hawking's early university days prior to the onset of this shitful disease, so necessitating the chunky editing of all the able years? Surely NOT. Eddie Redmayne was excellent and presented a most believable transition from well to very unwell. Oddly enough no one complained that a young woman, Felicity Jones, was cast as Jane, even though it meant that she needed to be artificially aged through-out the movie.

And even with this nonsense I say again, I liked it.

Michelin Star Masturbation

We are pretty brave about different tastes, even though I am happy to admit that I am not up to eating weird shit like kangaroo balls or koala penis. Anyway we have tasted some cool stuff at Degustation meals and as the night usually includes lots of wines the photography is sometimes a bit iffy.

I got Steve a Groupon Coupon for Christmas for Absynthe at Surfers Paradise and after we had fulfilled all the pre-requs for booking, and we tried hard to find a parking spot we stumbled into the place just a few minutes late and when the Maître de set eyes on the coupon  his shoulders drooped a little and he sent in the 'girlie from the Czech Republic' who wondered if we could understand her well enough.

We started with a beer. Steve tried a FAT YAK. He needed to pour it into a chilled glass cos it tasted a bit weird in the bottle. It was an OK brew.

And so to food.

6 courses and unusually only 3 wine tastes. Immediately we were told that there was no lamb rack and that we'd be given poached chicken instead.

1. Bite Me

Tomato soup made mostly from cucumbers in a shot glass. I should have stopped after my first little sip but I was hungry so downed the lot, or little bit as was lucky and it was the soup that kept on giving for the whole of the evening, into the small hours of this morning.

Yeh it bit me alright.

2.The Earth

That plastic stuff over the beetroot lump was I think vodka gel. A real squirt of voddie straight into my gob would have been better.

Beetroot stuff and the tiniest squirt of really nice blue cheese dip. Yeh there was other stuff on the plate but it didn't taste of anything so it was just empty calories and exercise for my jaw.

I didn't feel too grounded after this morsel fest.

3. Macquarie Harbour.

Scale needed: Salmon = pointy finger

A slither of very yummy salmon and 2 squirts of pumpkin mash and 2 squirts of cheesey dip. It was all pleasant enough even if so laden with salt that it drove even Steve to dive into the water glass instead of the wine. There was just soo much squirt that I wondered if the underpaid apprentice chef had gone a bit spastic with the piping bag.

4. The Farm.

Tasted just better than it looks.

Poached bit of rolled chicken which was salty but ok and green cabbage stuff which was ok but salty and some olive bubble goo which tasted of nothing at all.

Farmer Joe would not have had cause to be too proud of this lot.

5. The Sweet Start.

Those are squishy grapes and the orange stuff was nasty.

I ate the icey treat and Steve left the lot.

6. Heavenly Sweet

Yummy

A Chocolate fondant served still in the metal ramekin thing that we needed to burn our fingers trying to decant onto the plate. And even though the centre was not gooey like it should be, this was the hero dish of the night. It had some raspberry splodge on the side that was also pretty tastey.

All I can imagine is that this place does a bit of a poncey trade in unsuspecting posh type tourists who will never be in a position to come back and who want to be able to boast about some gastronomical greatness while on hols. It sure as hell cannot be relying on repeat local trade.

No we will not be back.